Three-dimensional Visualization of the Magnetic Microstructure in Bulk Fe-6.6 Pct Si

Abstract

Magnetic materials such as Fe-Si alloys are magnetized by the rearrangement of their magnetic microstructure and domain wall motion. Understanding magnetic microstructures in the interior of a ferromagnet is essential for the control and reduction of energy losses in electrical devices. The three-dimensional magnetic microstructure of solids is still unknown due to the lack of an appropriate observation technique, and the magnetic domain wall structure inside a ferromagnet has never been observed with sufficiently high resolution. The first observation of the 3D magnetic microstructure of an Fe-6.6 pct Si alloy with a high spatial resolution is reported. The domain walls known to exist inside positive anisotropy cubic materials, i.e., the 180-deg domain walls and the 90-deg domain walls, were analyzed for the first time. The structure and orientation of the domain walls were found to be very different from the prediction of current theoretic models. (C) The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM International 2013